Official Disabilities Guidelines Now Covers Diabetes

Today's post comes from guest author Paul J. McAndrew, Jr. from Paul McAndrew Law Firm.

While diabetes is not a work injury or illness, it can have a serious impact on the rate at which an injured worker recovers. For instance, people with diabetes may have a much harder time healing from a foot or leg injury.

The latest edition of the annual Official Disabilities Guidelines (ODG) has been released, including the latest ODG volume on treating patients. ODG Treatment is the nationally recognized standard for medicine in determining the scope and duration of medical treatment in workers’ compensation.

Hospitals Are Become Even Deadlier Places for Sick People

The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has reported that lethal drug-resistance bacteria is making its appearance at a growing rate at health care facilites. What has now been called a "nightmare of bacteria," CRE infections may now become a very serious complication of a work-related injury

"Drug-resistant germs called carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE, are on the rise and have become more resistant to last-resort antibiotics during the past decade, according to a new CDC Vital Signs report.  These bacteria are causing more hospitalized patients to get infections that, in some cases, are impossible to treat. 

CRE are lethal bacteria that pose a triple threat:

• Resistance: CRE are resistant to all, or nearly all, the antibiotics we have - even our most powerful drugs of last-resort.
• Death: CRE have high mortality rates – CRE germs kill 1 in 2 patients who get bloodstream infections from them.
• Spread of disease:  CRE easily transfer their antibiotic resistance to other bacteria.  For example, carbapenem-resistant klebsiella can spread its drug-destroying weapons to a normal E. coli bacteria, which makes the E.coliresistant to antibiotics also. That could create a nightmare scenario since E. coliis the most common cause of urinary tract infections in healthy people.

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